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Linux Foundation will not permit apps.meego.com

MeeGo is a project of The Linux Foundation, a non-profit organisation which "promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms". It provides the hosting and infrastructure for meego.com, as well as owning the overall governance structure and trademarks of the project.

apps.meego.com was to be the equivalent of maemo.org's Extras - a place for open source code to be available for multiple MeeGo devices, with a web-based frontend (and on-device client). For the last couple of weeks, the apps.meego.com team (that is, David Greaves and Niels Breet) have been working with the Community Office (Dawn Foster), the Technical Steering Group (Imad Sousou) and Linux Foundation representatives concerned over potential legal risks and issues with hosting apps.meego.com. Due to a lack of movement, David has publicised the issue:

The Linux Foundation have told us in private conversations that they will not permit apps.meego.com to be served from the MeeGo.com infrastructure hosted by them. They do not have the resource at this time to provide a statement giving their reasons. We can not assess what other services may be impacted in the future.

An alternative, apps.formeego.org has been given appropriate blessing and work is continuing on the apps.meego.com infrastructure - but with the intent of hosting the web-based frontend on apps.formeego.org instead. Nokia, as a large vendor with a MeeGo(ish) device on its way out, is partly sponsoring the requisite hardware, and is hoping that other parties interested in seeing a vibrant open source application ecosystem on MeeGo will also do the same. The service which would be building the source code, and hosting both that and the resulting binaries, the Community OBS, is currently believed not to be at risk - although David has noted the Linux Foundation's communications on the matter have been somewhat lacking.

Should, or could, "ForMeego.org" expand to solve many of the management problems of MeeGo?

As noted above, the Linux Foundation "own" MeeGo. However, neither they - nor the TSG - have been visible in trying to publicly work out a solution. Architecture decisions, quality assurance processes and many other facets of the project are also problematic to see transparency in. This led to a discussion on IRC about potentially expanding "ForMeeGo.org" to encompass all the aims of the N9x0 Community Edition, to be a reference vendor and be a "downstream" of MeeGo Core.

This would effectively isolate all the problems to one or more upstream projects, allowing hardware manufacturers to realise the true potential of MeeGo, that of a differentiatable ecosystem-in-a-box. Manufacturers would be able to take "ForMeeGo.org"'s deliverables, its ecosystem of open source applications and build a unique user interface on top of it. A few choice quotes:

Maybe we could set up a ForMeeGo organisation & council ;-)

the only place the project really works is on the factory floor, management seems missing and invisible

I'd rather see a restructure than a fork. But yeah, things like not having an active TSG, invisible working groups etc, doesn't give a good impression atm.

A restructure/fix of The MeeGo Project requires the participation of those leading the project.

Carsten Munk said, on Twitter, in response to this discussion "you know management is causing bad effects when forking out of frustration seems acceptable". Hopefully, the project leadership will put in place mechanisms to solve these problems (or the appearance of them) within the existing project.

Restructure MeeGo - thoughts on getting some direction

Following on from the above discussion, David Greaves posted some draft blog posts he'd had kicking around for a while:I've just published a series of articles that reflect my thoughts on improving MeeGo and setting some directon. [...] Whilst the MeeGo Project has the potential to be incredibly beneficial to the Linux device market it can and must do more to fulfill that aspiration. MeeGo is in danger of becoming "Yet Another Linux Distro". As with any venture; in order to succeed MeeGo must first identify and focus on satisfying its customers. Identification is not too hard : organisations involved in building devices based on MeeGo.

Applications

Next-generation gPodder user interface mockups

Andrew Zhilin has been working with Thomas Perl on a next-generation user interface for Thomas' podcast client, gPodder. Thomas walks us through them:

Back in December 2010, Andrew started with the first mock-ups based on the screenshots from meego.com. After that, we decided to go a step further and make it look even more futuristic (this was partly inspired by Metro - two months before #feb11). Most of the title bar and podcast list design have been kept (although evolved) in the current design. This is also the first time that Andrew integrated the playback feature into the mock-ups - a player "widget" that can be pulled down. In the current version, it's still a widget that can be brought in with a tab, but it's placed on the bottom.

It's worth looking to see how differently the same functionality can be presented to the user.

Nintendo 64 emulator running on Nokia N950

Javier S. Pedro has posted a video of his efforts in getting an N64 emulator running on his N950:there’s a quite a nice speed bump when compared to the N900. No frameskipping was used, and CPU clock was at 800Mhz (set by ondemand governor, and it even had some 20% idle CPU time to spare — as long as it was not in the background, when compositor kicks in).A video is included in the article.

Development

OBS down for fourth weekend in a row, with no explanation

The MeeGo.com OBS is evidently down again for the 4th weekend in a row. Unfortunately control of the OBS seems to be limited to a single MeeGo IT person, which leaves us in a bad place both for situations like these and for the hit-by-a-bus scenarios. Given the Community OBS's reliance on the main OBS, the COBS maintainers' lack of access, and community contributors' propensity for weekend-hacking, this seems like a significant productivity killer.

Open source replacement for Maemo 5 clock application under development

Work on the Community SSU continues, despite the impending arrival of Harmattan to global retail markets, and every open source replacement for Nokia closed source code is a step closed to a better and easier to maintain CSSU for everyone. The slow march continues with another built-in closed-source application replacement. This time with Sven H's open source replacement for Nokia's built-in Clock application. Development is still ongoing, and it's currently only available as a downloadable deb, but any interested parties should consider lending a hand to both this open source application replacement and the larger CSSU project.

Community

QA dashboard for MeeGo

A new QA Dashboard is now available on MeeGo.com to help users wishing to track QA activity. Jarno Keskikangas announced it on Friday:QA Dashboard is now available for public use. With QA Dashboard, QA Reports, bug lists and trends can be visualized in order to get an quick overview on current quality and progress. Build your own or share the dashboard with friends just by sending the link to your dashboard. We've quite exited about the dashboard and hope you are, too. Let us know what you think and what kind of information or visualizations would be valuable, and we'll get 'em done.A MeeGo.com account is required for access.

Why the Maemo Community Council aren't the people to come up with the plan to "save" maemo.org

One of your editors, Andrew Flegg, responded to comments on talk.maemo.org to calls that the Community Council come up with a plan to "save" Maemo and maemo.org:Saying "the Council needs to lead us" is entirely missing the point. Someone needs to come up with concrete, viable proposals which can be discussed. The council can assist with the publication and collaboration of that, as - I'm sure - anyone vested in Maemo will also publicise.

Once there is a popular, actionable plan for either of these two items, the council's power is to say "this is the roadmap" and then assist with the publication and collaboration of that, as - I'm sure - anyone vested in Maemo will also publicise.Andrew was one of the original proposers of the Community Council, and has served on it many times.

Pali Rohár has started a project to create a set of scripts to mirror maemo.org, starting with the Extras-* repositories.We know that Nokia abandoned Maemo5 and some day Nokia will stop Maemo5 repositories (SDK, apps, extras...). So I'm started creating shell scripts which will backup maemo 5 fremanle repositories (downloads.maemo.nokia.com and repository.maemo.org).

Scripts can also create package index (from repositories) and separate open and closed source. Some info about closed packages wrote Carsten Munk on his page - but it was for PR1.1. I asked him for application which generated his page, but he refuse publish it. So I'm created my own (scripts + wiki page).

Brute force cloning of repositories, rather than rsync/apt-mirror; and even the talk of screen-scraping the wiki suggest that a better approach would be working with the maemo.org maintainers to ensure that access will be available from Nemein in the event of Nokia withdrawing funding. A snapshot now (or, worse, a series of snapshots created by multiple people putting lots of load on the servers) is of little use if funding is withdrawn in a year or two; at which point the community will almost certainly be able to work with Nemein (and probably Nokia) to perform an orderly transition.

maemo.org is far more than a set of repositories and a forum; for example, there are services such as Garage maintaining source code, websites and mailing lists and the autobuilder, which is how the repositories get populated. These two services alone are large, complex and will be difficult to replicate.

Nokia N950 MeeGo device programme extended with 50 further devices

Quim Gil announced that the 250 N950s Nokia provided for allocation through the meego.com device programme had been extended with a further fifty devices. The process is a little different this time, with focus on projects which have code (of some form) already running on a Qt platform:Candidates MUST have real open source code published and functional via Qt Creator simulator/emulator, Scratchbox, running in similar platforms e.g. Maemo, Symbian, Linux desktop... It can be unstable and far from complete, but we want to see real work done already as a primary way to filter candidates.At the time of writing, fifteen are remaining.

Maemo Community Council member SD69 on mobile governance

RM Bauer has, following the announcement of the issues facing apps.meego.org, made a plea to those considering "abandoning" maemo.org on the topic of mobile Linux governance:the decision by LF seems to be a sucker punch to the kidneys of small and individual developers. I was reminded of a debate perpetuated not long ago by those who had espoused the relative openness of MeeGo and encouraged maemo developers to leave Maemo for MeeGo. [...] MeeGo will take mobile linux to new places and should be supported for that. But dare to say that leaving nothing but corporate run app stores is an unnatural and unsustainable state of affairs for an open source project. [...] A maemo.org run by the community would never make such a decision as that announced today. To maemo and other mobile linux developers, to those of you who support open source, those of you who have said maemo is dead, and those of you who have accepted "free" N950s - think carefully, think twice, and please continue to support maemo.org

alan bruce clarifies some of Rob's points: this is a Linux Foundation decision that is hurting Nokia more than developers, and commercial closed source applications won't be hosted on meego.com either. However, MeeGo does have a "governance" problem, as we noted on the front page.

For some things maemo.org is still the best place, but in the long term, maemo.org isn't going to be the home for MeeGo-related efforts, nor will the home of Mobile Linux in general. Ultimately, what it comes down to, is that open source is about the people, and people will go wherever best fits their interests whether that place will be the home of the community for a discontinued Nokia platform is up to them.

Help with mobile usability tests

On the maemo-developer mailing list Jarkko Palokangas looks for volunteer users to take part in a usability study for his Master's thesis.Requirements for users is that they got Nokia N900 device and internet connection. Tests are conducted in English. It is also desirable that the user has no or very little earlier experience about gPodder application.

User's task is to go through test cases and speak aloud all their feelings and thoughts at the same time.Interested users can contact Jarkko at the email address provided in the link,

Devices

N9 launch in Sweden: September 23

According to swipe.nokia.se, anyway. The Handheld Blog covers the countdown which has appeared on the website, ticking down to the launch of the Nokia N9 in Sweden:We finally have official word on when the Nokia N9 will launch – 49 days from today. The official countdown has gone live on the Nokia Sweden N9 page, so the launch date will probably be just valid for Sweden, but it does give us a pretty accurate estimate of when we can expect the device in other parts of the world.

In the Wild

Nokia switches device naming scheme once again

Nokia are clarifying their naming strategy, to avoid the artificial separation of features between E-series (for "professional" use) and N-series (for "multimedia" use):The launch of the Nokia 500 today marked a new departure for us. Not just because it’s our newest Symbian smartphone, but because of what we called it. Just numbers, no letters. [...] The first number is the relative price/feature point. So a Nokia 900* would be top dog and a Nokia 100* is the most accessible option. The second two numbers gives each device a unique identifier within that point. So we can release 99 phones at the 500 point before we have to recycle any names, for example.Of course, another way of looking at this is that this is going to further damage the N9's prospects. It will, when it launches, be labelled as an "old" device by salespeople explaining the difference between an N9 and a Nokia 901. It'll also be interesting to see what the Nokia 770 looks like when it gets released!

Announcements

Tomasz Sterna announces with little fanfare a very impressive project called Cordia Tab. A 7" tablet (based on existing hardware, which should speed up availability) running the Cordia HD interface - a completely open source version of Hildon Desktop.Cordia Open Tablet - is an effort to bring a practical, openly hackable, Open Source tablet device to Maemo & MeeGo communities.The hardware specification (available on the project page) certainly looks capable. Time will tell how the community will react to this project, but it might be worth it to note that it is coming from the opposite direction of the OpenPandora project. OpenPandora was started by hardware engineers with cutom-produced hardware to run an existing OS. Cordia Tab has been started by a software engineer and is based on existing hardware running an in-development OS (but will also run existing OSs).

Minifile - minimal file browser for Harmattan

MeeGo.com user "sfietkonstantin" has started a project for a much needed application in Harmattan: a file browser. The author admits that it is in the early stages with some work left to do:I have coded this simple app in two days and do not have time to make an icon yet ...I'm not satisfied yet because minifile lacks some features: Icons for files and folders, Breadcrum navigation, Search, Fast scroll, Settings (start directory), Maybe some animationsHarmattan advances the filesystem-less filemanagement that Apple has pushed with iOS. This has its advantages and disadvantages, but for a platform like Harmattan it's likely that a real filesystem browser will prove useful.

FlowPlayer, cover-flow style music player

Matias Perez has announced a very nice looking, very simplistic music player called FlowPlayer. It doesn't have an over-abundance or features, but it gets you straight to your music and looks beautiful doing it.I made this little music player, but it's more like a toy instead a real media player, cause here's no options for this or for that... The only think you can do is scroll the album list, select one and start playing. I'll still working on it this you like it, to add more features.The application is only available as a standalone binary deb at the moment, so volunteers willing to assist with packaging should get in touch with Matias.

MeePasswords - password manager for Maemo and Harmattan

Ruediger Gad announces MeePasswords for password storage in Fremantle and Harmattan.There are already some tools for storing passwords available for Fremantle. Though, I could not find any tool for Harmattan. Hence I created MeePasswords. Furthermore, MeePasswords features some eye candy such as animated transitions and the like. Generally, the design goal of the MeePasswords user interface was to allow quick and easy interaction. MeePasswords was initially developed for Harmattan. The Fremantle version was then ported based on the Harmattan version. The Fremantle version tries to mimic /MeePassword has also been submitted to the MeeGo Coding Competition 2011.

Drummer - a drumming app (needs packaging assistance)

{usre:skykooler} has released an initial version of his drumming app - "Drummer" - for the N900.So, I started work on a drumming app for the N900. Very simple at the moment, tap the drums to hear them. I plan to add record/playback functionality in the near future. It uses clutter for rendering, and pygame for the sound.The current version needs to be installed by extracting an archive into MyDocs, so packaging would be a welcome improvement. Until then, those with limited testing experience should probably steer clear.

TodoList - widget for managing to-do lists from homescreen

Giovanni Grammatico has put together a homescreen widget, TodoList, (based on QtMobility) which, appropriately enough, provides a todo list on your homescreen. Currently available only from Extras-devel, testers should take care it its handling.

WiFi hacking on N900 gets easier with Cleven UI

Christos Saturn has developed an user-friendly interface for aircrack-ng on the N900 called "Cleven".It provides the ability to easily configure the injection drivers, scan for surrounding stations, and, using injection and authentication or deauthentication, capture Identification Vector keys. In addition, it provides interfaces to decrypt the captured files and manage the successful attacks."User-friendly" is obviously a relative term, as users without some knowledge of what they are doing (and a good solid reason for doing it) probably aren't the target here. Users that know what they are doing will find it much easier with a good solid UI.

BabyPhone for Harmattan

Roman Morawek has published his first Harmattan version of babyphone (also available for Maemo5). From the project page:The babyphone is a baby monitoring application that measures the audio noise level. If the volume exceeds a configurable threshold the phone initiates a call to a predefined phone number (the parents)Roman's forum post also give some details about his porting experience. Your editor installed this for a wedding this weekend, and it seemed simple enough to use and get started with.

my-meego.com app index

A new application aggregator has been launched for Harmattan at my-meego.com, brought to you by the same gentleman who brought you my-symbian.com and my-maemo.com: Michal Jerz:I thought I'd let you know that I launched the MeeGo Harmattan Software Catalog on My-MeeGo today. Over 70 apps are already listed (with short descriptions, screenshots) and downloadable. Not a big deal, but hopefully a nice way to have an overview of what has already been released and be able to quickly find an app instead of browsing dozens of sites and forums, especially now that no official downloads, repositories, Ovi store section etc. exist yet. I will be doing my best to collect software from all sources so that the catalog is as complete and as up-to-date as possible.Some of the feedback has caused some friction; but this may be left-over from my-maemo.com, which lists the latest versions of all applications, without differentiating between -devel, -testing and Extras. This leads to users having additional repositories enabled, and unintended upgrades (and breakage) of other applications.